Prisoners pose more threats than we know to society. For a long time, issues of bioethical importance have been pervasive in prisoners - many relating to the inhumane use of prisoners in experimentation without informed consent - and now, yet another ethical dilemma has descended upon the realm of prison bioethics.
It has been proven that prisoners have a typically higher rate of diseases like AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis, among others, and the concern has been raises about the introduction of these prisoners back into society with the knowledge that they are essentially walking carriers (Associated Press). There is an obvious risk that these carriers will cause outbreaks in the general population, and possible solutions have been voiced. As it stands, the criminal justice system oversees the health of prisoners. What has been suggested is that the public health systems of countries do the overseeing instead of the criminal justice system, and the World Health Organization counsels nations to provide the best possible health care to prisoners. Furthermore, researchers suggest that prisoners should be screened before they are let go, and subsequently treated. The ethical dilemma then lies in the unfairness of the situation: why should incarcerated prisoners receive the benefits of the "best possible healthcare", free of charge no less, when much of society will never see these benefits? Why should criminals get benefits when so many innocent people suffer with terrible healthcare?
To me, the answers to these questions are simple. I do in fact believe that criminals do lose some rights when they make the choice to violate the laws that keep society in order, and choose to deprive the rights of others. However, it is not their interests that I am concerned with in this situation. The population I am concerned with is poor society. Most criminals come from impoverished backgrounds, and therefore their reintroduction into society places them back where they came from. The outbreaks of disease will affect nations' poor societies, and these are the people that this healthcare would be protecting. Seena Fazel and Jacques Baillargeon, who wrote the medical review of prisoner's health, stated that "Prisoners act as reservoirs of infection and chronic disease, increasing the public health burden of poor communities" (Associated Press). Furthermore, being in prison has the potential to worsen prisoners' conditions, therefore making them more likely to be infectious. What would be unfair is not that prisoners receive better healthcare, but instead that poor communities, which are already burdened, would have to deal with the further burden of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis outbreaks.
The further motion to screen prisoners being released for illnesses and treating those illnesses before they are freed is, in my opinion, complete common sense. Even if people do not believe that prisoners should be treated while in prison, then they should at least concede that screening them before they reinsert themselves into society would serve nobody more than the poor. Although a small measure, it could potentially save lives - innocent ones, nonetheless.
If the health of prisoners does not concern us, then the health of the innocent poor should. This is not something to ignore because we have moral holdings that criminals should not be given benefits, it should be acted upon now.
Works:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111805660.html
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Ideally, the health care system should clinically screen prisoners before and after prison to ensure some degree of conformity. I definitely see where you’re coming from- instead of looking at this from the perspective of the prisoner, we should be looking at this issue from a societal standpoint. After all, we are endagering more lives because of these ‘negative externalities,’ so it is appropriate that screening be done.
That is why I believe we should provide prisoners with health care as you said, but only to a certain extent. Otherwise, there would be something ethically disturbing about how our penal system works: as criminal activity increases, public health increases, as well. Something morally wrong leads to something socially beneficial; clearly, wedding our criminal justice system to health care sullies certain fundamental moral constructs. As you said, looking at it from the perspective of a healthier criminal may be too simplistic, but in that vein, looking at the consequential spread of disease alone is equally short-sighted. If the idea is to prevent the external, negative effects of releasing these ‘reservoirs of infection,’ by all means, we cannot do greater harm than we do good. That’s why we should try our best to keep prisoners in the conditions they were in upon entering prison. That said, it may be too ambitious to augment societal beneficience by providing full treatment or health care. It would be folly to prop up the second ideal of beneficence in the Belmont Report, while jeopardizing the third.
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